In a whirlwind effort aided by staffers from a half-dozen or more Democratic campaigns, 3rd District congressional candidate Theresa Greenfield on Friday dramatically withdrew and then resubmitted her petition to run in the June primary.
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Des Moines businesswoman Theresa Greenfield is running for Congress in Iowa's 3rd District.(Photo: Special to the Register)

In a whirlwind effort aided by staffers from a half-dozen or more Democratic campaigns, 3rd District congressional candidate Theresa Greenfield on Friday dramatically withdrew and then resubmitted her petition to run in the June primary.

🚨🚨🚨 Theresa @GreenfieldIowa says her campaign manager told her he submitted fraudulent signatures on her first petition, leading her to re-submit her candidate petition at literally the last minute. pic.twitter.com/ZpcUnkuboz

Depending on the number of signatures that were actually forged, it’s possible Greenfield may have had enough legitimate signatures to qualify for the ballot with the initial petition. The presence of fraudulent signatures does not invalidate an entire petition so long as there are enough valid ones to meet the ballot requirements, Iowa Secretary of State’s Office spokesman Kevin Hall.

But Greenfield made clear that wasn’t an option.

“I have no idea,” she said when asked how many the former campaign manager, Noah Wasserman, had forged. “It doesn’t matter. If it’s one, that’s one too many, and I just couldn’t allow that to go forward.”

Greenfield said she immediately fired Wasserman on Thursday night and then began reaching out to supporters and fellow Democrats around the 3rd District, which encompasses the Des Moines metro and rural southwest Iowa.

By Friday morning, she had assembled an ad-hoc team of petition circulators for an all-out signature-gathering blitz and petition resubmission effort that was one part political thriller, one part slapstick buddy comedy.

Staffers and volunteers from five Democratic gubernatorial campaigns, legislative offices, labor unions, county Democratic parties and even the campaign of 3rd District rival Pete D’Alessandro fanned out across the 16 counties of Iowa’s 3rd District to gather signatures Friday and then rush them back to the Secretary of State’s Office in Des Moines before a mandated-by-law 5 p.m. deadline.

“We had probably hundreds of folks who are Team Theresa, Team Democracy, Team Iowa, that stepped up today to help us out,” Greenfield said. “It’s heartwarming and it reminds me of what’s at stake today.”

Those staffers and volunteers literally ran through the Capitol rotunda as the clocked ticked down to 5 p.m., gathering petition sheets from Polk, Warren, Madison, Taylor and Union counties just outside the Secretary of State’s Office door.

But with mere minutes to go, Greenfield herself still hadn’t arrived — she was needed to sign paperwork officially withdrawing the initial petition and then submitting the new one. At 4:57, the assembled crowd learned she had gone instead to the Lucas Building, the state office across a parking lot for the Capitol that also houses Secretary of State staff.

Iowa 3rd District congressional candidate Theresa Greenfield, center, walks through the Capitol after resubmitting her petition to appear on the June primary ballot.(Photo: Jason Noble/The Register)

Greenfield entered Lucas at 4:53 p.m., signed the paperwork at 4:59, and had it stamped by a state official at 5 p.m. exactly, according to the office.

Under state law, a Democratic candidate in the 3rd District must gather at least 1,790 valid signatures, including a minimum number of signatures in at least eight counties. Those county-by-county minimums range from just two signatures in small rural counties like Cass, Ringgold or Taylor, to at least 201 in Polk County.

On Friday night, after it was over, Greenfield herself wasn’t even sure how many signatures had been submitted in the new petition.